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whisper_jeff writes "There's been a confirmed outbreak of Swine Flu at PAX. Those who attended and are feeling under-the-weather after the con should not write it off as a typical convention cold and go see a doctor to make sure, just in case." The linked post also lists the airplane flights of the cases known so far, so if you flew from Seattle on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday for any reason, you might want to compare your itinerary.

Swine flu is the Apophis of pandemics. Now, Apophis has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth in a few decades. Swine flu is probably several times more deadlier than a normal flu. Surely fascinating to someone that deals with the low probabilities all the time, but the end result is that it's nevertheless still low, and maybe some people are exaggerating for the sake of their profession.

Most people haven't had the flu in years. Most people also call any heavy cold a 'flu'. Now when experts describe the symptoms of swine flu as 'mild', most people think of a cold, meaning having the sniffles for a few days.

People who have recently experienced the actual flu remember that 'oh yeah, that used up two years worth of my sick leave last year', or 'oh yeah, that's what put mom in intensive care last winter'.

A mortality rate of 0.1% sounds like no risk at all, but if a third of the population gets it during an epidemic, that means 300000 people dead. The 99.9% survivors include people who needed intensive care, anti viral treatment, weeks on a respirator.

Most people don't bother to get flu shots, because they (probably rightly) assume that the flu wouldn't kill them. They forget that while it might not kill them, they are likely to infect a dozen others, who each infect a dozen others, etc, some of which include someone's newborn baby, or someone's grandpa, or a pregnant woman, or a kid with asthma, all of whom run a much greater risk than 0.1%

"Do not seek medical care if you are not ill or have mild symptoms for which you would not ordinarily seek medical care. If you have more severe symptoms of fever, cough, sore throat, body aches or are feeling more seriously ill, call your health care provider to discuss your symptoms and if you need to be evaluated."

An estimated one third of the world's population (or 500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to 0.1% in other influenza pandemics. Total deaths were estimated at 50 million (5-7) and were arguably as high as 100 million.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as on August 21, there have been 1,799 deaths in total 182,000 laboratory confirmed cases across the world, which makes 0.9 per cent the mortality rate across the world.

But the stats are not all that clear taken as a whole.From the same article:

With 584 deaths, Brazil tops the list of countries reporting fatalities due to the H1N1 virus. The mortality rate in Brazil is 0.29 per cent. However, if one takes into consideration the 5,206 laboratory confirmed cases, the mortality rate is 10 per cent -- much higher than India's.

You recall incorrectly. According to the CDC, its mortality rate is about 0.1%, and the WHO says it is between 0.06% and 0.24%, which is very comparable to the (estimated) mortality rate for standard influenza of 0.1% to 0.2%, depending on how bad the individual flu season is that year. The WHO also says the most likely people to die from H1N1 are the elderly, the very young, or those with some sort of immune deficiency. Just like a normal flu. If the mortality rate is higher for healthy people, and lower for sick people, nobody is saying so except for news anchors, certainly not the CDC or WHO.

Yeah, the issue with H1N1 doesn't have to do with its lethality. The bigger concern is that because it is different enough from previous flu strains that a given individual's immune system is unlikely to have a useful level of immunity to it. So basically you're more likely to get sick if you're exposed to it.

If you do get sick, your chances of becoming severely ill and/or dying is not higher than with the average seasonal flu. It really only becomes an issue on a larger scale. According to the CDC website, between 5-20% of the US gets the flu in a given year, and on average they estimate about 36,000 die each year. If H1N1 infects 50%, at 0.1% mortality rate, then you're looking at 150,000 dead. And while that's not civilization ending by any means, it's still a lot of extra dead people.

Of course this is in addition to all the people who get the seasonal strain as well (some people will get swine but not seasonal, some will get the opposite, and some will even get both). But either way, if more people are sick at the same mortality rate, the total dead will also increase. The short way to say it: worry less about mortality rate, worry more about transmission rate.

The big worry isn't all the athletic, healthy, strapping young gamers at PAX. It's their high-risk friends, family members, co-workers, etc who can easily contract the virus from them. Worry less about the cosplayers, worry more about the cosplayer's teacher's ailing mother who ends up severely ill or dead.

The mortality rate is half that of the standard seasonal strains. Its actually far less deadly than anything we've seen before, unless of course you're an idiot watching CNN all day long, in which case I hope you die.

And, in fact, there is evidence to suggest that it may even be slightly lower than your ordinary, garden variety seasonal flu.

Many people don't realize that influenza can be a fatal, especially in those who are immunodeficient; this would include the elderly, diabetics, AIDS victims, small children, those undergoing chemotherapy, etc.

Of course, even the ordinary seasonal influenza can become very serious even for those who aren't immunodeficient -- if you don't take influenza seriously enough and ignore the

Maybe, but speaking as an agent of the Global Pandemic Influenza Conspiracy, our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise. Our *two* weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical dedication to the World Health Organization...

"Swine virus 100 times lethal than seasonal flu". Of course, it could still be statistical noise. But it seems trends are starting to emerge - there are targets who are not at risk from seasonal flu, but are more vulnerable to swine flu: namely pregnant people, obese people, and teenagers.

Good lord, you can't even quote your own source correctly. It says "People who die after getting swine flu are 100 times more likely, compared to seasonal flu, to have been killed by the virus itself rather than secondary causes." Which is a rather odd way of putting it to start with (by "dying from the virus itself" they really mean "dying due to overzealous immune reaction"), and not helpful from assessing mortality rates in general. If 1000 people die of swine flu, and another 1000 die of seasonal flu with complications, it's not really that important from a lethality standpoint. If the seasonal group's secondary infections would not have occurred absent the seasonal flu, then the seasonal flu was still responsible for the death.

Secondly, the article itself notes that "Both seasonal influenza and the new A(H1N1) virus that has swept the globe since May appear to have roughly the same mortality rate of one-to-five per 1,000 infections," though it notes that the swine flu figures are sketchy.

Finally, your source is suspect to start with. It's a single scientist, and the results haven't actually been published, just posted to a research sharing website (no real vetting has occurred). In case you've forgotten, science reporting goes for sensation over accuracy [smbc-comics.com].

It's not a matter of some conspiracy. Fear sells. It's legal to "stretch the truth," or as I like to say, lie about things in order to get your numbers higher for the nightly news or the homepage impressions.

When you listen to what scientists are saying, it's the fact that it's a new strain that is the dangerous part. It's already shown resistance to typical treatment, so if it becomes particularly nasty through mutation this winter (exactly as the Spanish flu did, by the way) then it will be a problem.

I know using "science" to head problems like this one off at the pass is a terribly unpopular idea in America, but one that I support anyway. It's better to be safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Wash your hands. Don't go to work if you're sick. And if you feel ill, go to the doctor. Good advice in general, but not only are you protecting yourself, but also reducing the chance that we turn this winter into a perfect storm for H1N1.

I was at PAX and caught something, dunno what it was but I get feeling kind of crummy. Did I run out to a fucking doctor to find out if I had "TEH SWINE FLUES!?!?!?" No. Why? Cause there's absolute fuck all they can do.
I got home, bought some Nyquil, Aspirin, Halls, a gallon of OJ, and have been getting tons of rest. As of right now I feel way better and just have an annoying slightly plhegmy cough.
All these swine flu stories are total crap and need to stop being sensationalized. The doctor cannot

Controlled through fear? If I may ask, what are we being controlled to do? Watch more TV news, mostly, as far as I can tell.

Which is a problem in itself. TV news isn't actually informative to a large extent. From the weeks of TV news coverage given to swine flu, the actual relevant information could easily be condensed down to half a dozen bullet points (I'll append them to the end of this post). No, in the case of the flu the motives may be benign, so it's not "controlled" in the puppet sense, but the hysteria over swine flu clogs emergency rooms (costing money, time and just for good measure, increasing the spread as the fe

No, the swine flu, just like the normal flu, is a threat to sick kids with poor health care, and the elderly. Normal, healthy adults will feel like crap, and get over it just like a normal flu.

The media loves to blow these things up. SARS was going to kill us all. The avian flu was going to kill us all. Killer bees were going to kill us all.

Sadly, I work for a newspaper that ran a headline that Nebraska had its first swine flu death. What it hid much later in the story was that the case was a Mexican child who was already near death was transported to a Nebraska hospital, and then he died within a day of arriving. Most "American" swine flu deaths are stories like these.

Young people may be catching the H1N1 virus more so than older people, but it hasn't been killing or hospitalizaing them in high numbers. From the news reports I've seen H1N1 has been hospitalizing people with chronic illnesses such as asthma, diabetes and other serious lung ailments. It also seems to hospitalize blacks and hispanics more so than white people, which tend to have those illnesses more so.

Let's just face the facts: If you venture out of the basement to attend a convention, then you're not sufficiently introverted.

I went to the PAX convention, and oddly enough there were slobs there who didn't shower. Every now and then you'd walk down the hall and get a wiff of bad BO. Seriously (rant not aimed at the parent;)) if any of you are reading this and you go to a public place without being clean what kind of slob are you?

Same thing at Blizzcon - and it happened in the hotel nearby where there were plenty of showers placed conveniently in the room where you are staying.

... and me without my mod points. So I'll chime in. Right now the CDC recommends NOT going to the doctor if you think you have the flu (why spread it at all? They can't give you anything for it.) Just stay at home, watch the fever, drink lots of fluids and rest. Call your doctor and get a remote diagnosis if you need it for work or school but otherwise just keep away from the healthy people!

I was going to say pretty much the same thing. The recommendation and approved procedure for suspected cases of swine flu here in the UK is to *call* your doctor and go through the symptoms over the phone to avoid spreading the disease further. If the doc thinks you have a genuine cases, then a friend or relation can go and pick up a prescription for your TamiFlu and, big whoop, you get to cut about one day off your suffering. My local surgery even has a sign on the door to that effect.

They list warning signs that advise seeking medical care for adults on that page: Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen; sudden dizziness; confusion; severe or persistent vomiting; or flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough.

Authorities should be alerted to outbreaks in each area and statistics should be available nation/worldwide. Seems reasonable to me to do this through general practitioners. It's better than telling people to go to the ER and report it.

Now I'm not saying that H1N1 is bad enough to warrant this kind of attention, but once it's been officially recognized as a pandemic or whatever certain procedures have to be followed.

Not for your own benefit, but for others who may have been exposed and are more susceptible. The guys at Penny Arcade are making a list of flights which had passengers confirmed by testing to be contagious with swine flu. Having this information available could help others.

Note: The list has grown substantially over the past few days as people get tested.

If you look at it, the mortality rate is right in line with other flus. Ok, well that means treat it like any other flu. So you usually go to the doctor for the flu? Then don't go for this one. If symptoms are serious, then yes go to the doctor, urgent care, or the hospital (depending on how serious). However do that for ANYTHING.

The only reason this would need to be treated differently is if there was a higher mortality rate. If you were much more likely to die from it, then yes, maybe professional monitor

You mean public health as in "Don't go visit other people (such as doctors) who can't do anything for you and might catch it from you?"

If you have the swine flu, there's nothing your doctor can do for you; you need to rest, drink fluids and keep yourself from making other people sick, and call your local non-emergency police number to report the case. Going to a doctor won't do anything for you, and it will actively endanger the health of other people.

I work in a subset of the public health field, and we're really fucking annoyed when we hear a bunch of well-meaning idiots telling people to go to their doctor for something that a doctor cannot possibly do anything about.

Don't waste resources pointlessly - it essentially denies treatment to people who actually do need it and can benefit from it.

If you do test positive for swine flu then proper public health measures can be taken.

It's the fucking flu! Have you never had the flu before?

WTF do you think "proper public health measures" are for a highly infectious, incurable disease that in normal situations runs its course in under a week? CLUE: It does NOT involve going into a hospital where you can infect other especially vulnerable people only to have a doctor tell you what you SHOULD already know, which is that he can't do anything for you!

I really don't get this disconnect people are having. It's called "swine flu" just to distinguish it from every other strain of flu that hits every year, but it is still essentially the same bug.

It's like the news reports I see on CNN where the info bar at the bottom will have "Symptoms of Swine Flu", and then lists the symptoms of THE FLU. In fact, maybe if instead of actually listing the symptoms, it just said "Symptoms of Swine Flu: Same as Every Other Flu" people would be less freaked out and slightly less ignorant about what Swine Flu really is -- THE FLU.

Seriously, FFS, if you think you have Swine Flu, pretend you have the "normal" flu (which you do) and act accordingly by staying home and not bothering your doctor.:P

I came back from PAX with a fever. When I heard about the H1N1 outbreak I thought "Eh, I'll give my doctor's office a call to see if they want to track me as a statistic or something.". So I did, and they said "If you thing you might have swine flu then you should come to urgent care right away wearing a mask!". I was confused by this but did as told. After an hour of waiting around with an uncomfortable mask on, the doctor told me that maybe I have H1N1 but it wasn't worth testing specifically since it's no different from regular flu. To which I said "That's what I thought. So why did you make me come in?". He didn't have a good answer.

It's simply not true that a doctor can't do anything for you. We've had antivirals that are highly effective against influenza for a while now. However, it is important to limit the use of these antivirals to the most severe cases because of the risk of emergence of resistant strains. Thus, in general, doctors will not do anything for you unless there is reason to believe that you might not get over it on your own.

Why do people care extra-special about swine flu? It's already everywhere. It also doesn't have a mortality rate much higher than the average flu. And with prompt medical attention should respiratory symptoms develop, there's a minimal risk of mortality. I'd be more worried about that guy weaving in the SUV next to you with a greasy burger in one hand and a cell phone covered in ketchup in the other. A lot more.

Because swine flu is a rarer type of virus in that it transfered from one species to another, something that bird flu hasn't (yet). Given that it can mutate that rapidly, we need to keep a close eye on it. Alot of people blame fleas and rats for "The Black Death" that plagued Europe and killed around half the population, but in hindsight alot of it was because of poor hygene practices and people thinking its just another disease, before it being fully developed in 2 months and killing the person.

It also doesn't have a mortality rate much higher than the average flu.

One of my biggest peeves about the media FUD around swine flu - It has a LOWER mortality rate than your
typical annual flu. Lower. Less than.

As in, if you had to pick between a random flu-season strain or swine flu, you'd want to get swine
flu!

Now, some fearmong^H^H^Hexperts claim that it "could" mutate into a more lethal strain - Which if we seriously
believe that, everyone should do their damnedest to catch it ASAP, thereby exposing their immune systems to
a similar virus and reducing the symptoms from that hypothetical killer version.

Nah... Let's just panic about it. Perhaps enough midly sick people driving like maniacs to their
local hospital can raise the mortality rate to compete with a typical flu, via car accidents.

1.) "cytokine storm" Instead of the sickest, it (seemed) to be the healthiest that had the highest mortality risk.

2.) It's historically been very bad when diseases jump from one animal to another. It can be so very different than anything else we've seen that it does immense damage for years, until we catch-up (and all those with some genetic susceptibility trait die off). See: HIV

3.) It's only now that there's a large enough population infected that we h

Or perhaps, and this is just a suggestion, the OP was making an oblique reference to PAX. More specifically for Penny Arcade and one of its central founders of Jerry "Tycho" Holkins. Hence the clever substitution of "Tychoid" instead of "Typhoid".

But its a pandemic, like the Spanish Flu from 1918 and the Hong Kong Flu from 1968. The 1918 flu pandemic killed millions all around the world . Of course the Hong Kong flu killed only about 34,000 in the U.S. compared with a yearly average of about 36,000 in the U.S. from ordinary flu. But beware its a flu pandemic, it might kill millions./s

CDC says 1million have had it in the US this summer, 590 or so deaths...

For 0.05%

Its not even as bad as the standard mix of flu strains seen in the typical year.

According to everyone EXCEPT the news media, this strain is of less concern than the standard seasonal strains as it appears to be non-mutating, your body becomes resistant after the first infection and it has a lower mortality rate t

Funny, there was a news article no more than an hour ago about how virtually everybody who got the flu this last summer had swine flu. Thus, it is proved that naming a strain of a virus does not necessarily ensure that it will kill millions, contrary to popular belief.

In response to Swine Flu, MEX airport, they have deployed an thermal camera that takes your temperature via your face. This is done before you can check in to your flight. You step in front of a ordinary looking camera, and the security officer then allows you to pass, there is a screen where you can see your own face & temp. Pretty darn accurate. Strangely enough I am sort of sick today, sore throat, but that has been going around the office.

...mers! No, wait, that can't be right. Let me try that again. (Consults Big Book o' Plagues to Call Upon Heathens.) Okay, this is gonna take a while, I'll be back to damn all the perverts to Hell once I figure out some sort of tenuous and moon-logical connection. Don't start the flamewar without me, OK? Thanks!

The PAX was meant to calm the population and weed out aggression. The agent worked, but too well: 99.9% of the population became so lethargic that they stopped working, talking, and eventually eating and moving. They simply lay down and succumbed to death. The remaining 0.1% of the people had the opposite reaction to the Pax, becoming mindlessly violent and extremely aggressive.
It was in the Air supply!!!

I was at PAX. DON'T WORRY, I'M OK. The newspapers in Seattle were screaming about a Swine Flu outbreak at the local university (along with "COUGAR ATTACKS IN PARK"), so I figured it might pop up at PAX, along with some big rock concert event that was happening simultaneously.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.